A Story about Nothing
by Charles Lehmann - Minamorti
Summary: This is a story about nothing. Not nothing as in useless information nothing; nothing as in the lack of any type of existence nothing . Nothing as in that the absence of being, the absence of self, lack of anything and everything. Rated T for Thoughts.


**Disclaimer**: I do not own Teen Titans, or any of its properties, titles, etc. etc. And if I did, they would have at least made a 6th season that explains that element monster's and this Terra look-a-like's appearance.

I admit it. I just wrote this for kicks. If you honestly want to read a real Teen Titans fanfic, you'd better look somewhere else. This story is more centered on the OC than any other Titan character. Sorry but that's how it's going to be. You've been fairly warned.

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It was a sunny morning in Titans Tower, the sort of bright, cheerful mornings that makes you, despite every reason to the contrary, happy to be alive. It was the type of morning that drives any truly sensible person to tears, because they know that they will never experience another morning like this again. No man or woman could wake up to such a beautiful morning and be mad for it. To do so would be practically sacrilegious.

On a morning as splendid as this, one was apt to think that creation looked similar to this morning on the final day of Genesis, which, given the recent turn-of-events in the last 24 hours or so, would be a fairly accurate assumption, because, just the day before, it had been the end of the world.

For, just yesterday, Trigon, a nigh-omnipotent, inter-dimensional demon, who had entered our dimension through his daughter and portal, Raven of the Teen Titans, had nearly eradicated all life from the face of the Earth, had battled with the Teen Titans and nearly destroyed them, and who planned to conquer the rest of our dimension, had been renounced and banished from this sphere, back from whence he came, by the same daughter/portal, Raven, who was right now enjoying a cup herbal tea.

It was quiet in Titans Tower. Raven was in the Tower's main living room, sitting in her preferred spot with her tea, enjoying the peace and quiet that was Titans Tower in the early hours. There was the occasional faint beep bop of buttons and switches, as machines and computers kept the tower running smoothly. Raven managed to ignore the sounds, as she always did.

She was reading yet another book, an ancient text of questionable origins, and was finding it a rather enjoyable read. Taking a sip of her tea, she realized that she had been so engrossed with her book that she had left the tea untouched, and more importantly, cold. Grimacing at her poor luck, she got up, and pouring the ruined tea in the sink, she went and turned the stove back on. She boiled some water, grabbed the tea leaves and waited. Waiting for a few minutes, the water started to boil and the tea pot began to whistle, telling her the water was hot enough. Taking the perspiring kettle, she poured herself her tea. After putting the leaves and stirring, she went back to her spot and made herself comfortable again.

. Taking a sip of her tea, Raven turned the page and started the next chapter. She enjoyed these few hours of solace in the tower, when everyone else was asleep; unless there was some form of trouble in the city, this was one of the few times in the day where she could expect any type of release, when the world was turned off, when it wasn't barging into her little world of self-distance and emotional dampening with all of its little stresses and worries, fears and madness. Unlike the time she spent in her room, it was almost a certainty that no one would barge in on her tranquility, disturbing her with her mediation or joy-reading with some random, pointless reason that they believed to be important, while the only thing that was important to Raven at those times was the ability to exercise her right of privacy. Oh, Raven did enjoy the company of her friends and teammates, really, she did. She simply felt that she was still obligated to her right not to hang out with them every second of the day, as much as she had the right to do otherwise. After all, everyone needs a little me-time. This was simply Raven's me-time and she'd be damned if anyone tried to wreck it.

But alas, all good things must come to an end, same as everything else in the universe. Right now, for instance.

Without any warning or explanation, Beast Boy, still in his bunny-pajamas, suddenly walked through door to the Main Room, and with Morpheus' sand still in his eyes, he walked right for the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator, Making himself a bowl of cereal, he went and sat down at one of the numerous tables in the Main Room and wearily began to noisily eat and chew his breakfast. He utterly failed to notice Raven sitting not 10 paces in front of him, but Raven noticed him all too well.

"Damn," she thought privately to herself. "There goes the rest of the morning.

Uttering a few more personal curses to herself, Raven tried to resettle down and continue with her book Beast Boy's noisy chewing was irritating and unwanted, but was currently bearable. From the looks of things, Beast Boy didn't seem in any hurry to make any other noise, at least until he properly woke up; if she could filter his noise out, then maybe she could get back to reading and finish the chapter before the rest of the team woke… oh, look it. Here they come now. _Great_.

Entering with as much sluggish grace as their green shape-shifter, the rest of the Teen Titans, Robin, Cyborg and Starfire, either dragged or floated into their worthless hides into the Main Room and went about their normal morning business. Robin, who had drawn the short straw last night on the next day's cook, pulled himself into the kitchen and started to make everyone's meals, while Cyborg and Starfire sat at the table, exhausted beyond all belief.

Having worked together and kicked Trigon's sorry butt back to whatever hellish dimension he was probably from, they had all decided to hold an all-day and all-night blow-out party in celebration, and, like every other person in existence who decides to go on an all-out binge for any earthly good, they were now paying for it through the nose. Even Robin, the obsessive-compulsive exercise freak, was out of it. There would be no training today for any of them and possibly no training tomorrow; they all felt that bad. If they were lucky and if God had mercy, there would be little to no trouble in the city today, with the sole exception of your every day petty crimes and thievery, which could hopefully be handled by the regular police force. They certainty didn't look forward to fighting anyone on that would call for their unique attention; fights with villains like Control Freak or Mumbo would not be welcomed.

Cyborg stretched in his seat.

"Dudes! I'm totally smashed!" he complained, resting his chin on the table.

Truly, friend, for I too share your pain. Your Mr. Daniel's does not sit well with me," Starfire whined, gripping her pounding head. Unlike humans, the blood-to-alcohol ratio of Tamaraneans was about 6 times less than that of the average human beings, which meant that while Starfire had only had about two shots of Jack's finest, that her body felt as if she had taken twelve shots. Starfire, who knew little of the human culture to start with, knew nothing of the level concentration that Earth alcohol had over Tamaranean alcohol and was now paying for her understandable ignorance. .

Robin said nothing. He still remembered the sight that had greeted him earlier that morning in bed. Fortunately, Starfire had still been asleep when he had woken up and had hardly said anything besides some sleep-gargled nothings when he carried her back to her room. When he had seen her sleeping right next to him that morning, he had panicked for a second, before he realized with great relief that both of their uniforms were still on. Still, they had come _this_ close to hitting it together and the prospect of her bringing it up terrified him. So far, she hadn't said a word of it; perhaps she had forgotten it in her drunken stupor. Robin prayed that this was the case.

Shoving these thoughts from his head, Robin got back to making breakfast.

Beast Boy merely continued eating his cereal. He couldn't even remember what had happened last night; perhaps this was for the best. Maybe later he would have some of Robin's breakfast. Robin had grabbed four tofu eggs and sausages just in case.

Soon, the sounds and smells of breakfast spread throughout the room. The sound of bread popping from the toaster intermingled with the crispy, oily smell of frying bacon and eggs. The teapot whistled as Robin cut up some fruit to make a fruit salad for everyone, including strawberries, blueberries, black berries, bananas, grapes and some wedges of watermelon; the pancakes were being left to burn. The microwave dinged; the store-bought éclairs were done

The rest of the team began trying to pull themselves together, picking themselves up from their tiresome exhaustion. By the time that Robin finished making breakfast, they had managed to reach some semblance of normality; Starfire readjusted to her usual perky self, and was putting mustard on her burnt waffles, which no one else would touch; Cyborg got into a fight with Beast Boy when both mistakenly ate one of the other's sausages and had to purge their systems to rid themselves of the filth; Robin sat beside Starfire, and was politely declining a taste of her mustard-waffles but had agreed to share his small fruit salad with her; and Raven looked on all of this with a small smile on her face.

It was surprising to her how quickly everything had gone back to normal, after the previous day's events. After all, she had accepted her fate as Trigon's gateway and had allowed him into the mortal plane. It was her fault that he had nearly destroyed everyone and everything that she cared about. The world had nearly ended. And yet here they were, as if nothing had ever happened. They had forgiven her of all of it, just like that. If she didn't understand humanity's capacity for forgiveness, she wouldn't believe it even if she had seen it.

"No wonder I like them so much," she thought. Closing her book, Raven went over and sat down with her friends. They hardly noticed her presence, outside of a quick glance or nod; not out of neglect or apathy but because they had grown so accustomed to her presence that they had just accepted that she had always been there and always would be. Picking up a fork, Raven stabbed an egg and set back and enjoyed her comrade's noisy conversations. Sometimes peace is the silence of a quiet home and sometimes it's the warm, noisy comfort of friends and family. Everyone needs a little peace in their lives; without it, humans wouldn't be human.

It's a shame that it wouldn't last, however…

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Elsewhere…anywhere…nowhere…no place at all…

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Most people like to think that this dimension, the dimension they were born and lived in all throughout their small existence, is the only one that exists. That even if we're not alone in this universe, that at least there isn't some other great unknown even scarier than the one they live in. They comfort themselves with this idea, which is the only reason they are able to sleep at night, with the belief that there is nothing outside our own disturbing vast universe, which itself defies human understanding.

Unfortunately for them, they are completely and utterly dead wrong.

Because, just outside our own universe, there is another universe. And another and another and another. In fact, there are almost an infinite amount of other universes, some big, some small, some weirdly bizarre and some so mundane that watching a snail race was practically a day in the park. Some had life in them and some didn't. But, out of all of them, inside there was always something, whether it be a green planet filled to the brim with life or a frozen dead rock. But these universes we do not concern with ourselves at the present moment. No, our story occurs on the outside of the universes, the multiverses, outside of existence itself: the nothingness of Nowhere.

To call it another dimension, another universe, would be the most grievous of errors. The nothingness of Nowhere is not a dimension or universe; it is the direct opposite of it. It is Nothing, plain and simple. It is the outer ridge, the backbone, of existence. It is the thing that outside it all, where nothing is the only thing that exists. Nowhere "existed" before the multiverse existed and it will still be there when it ended, for nothing lasts forever. It is the place of nothing, where nothing exists, and it is as infinite and boundless as man's incomprehensible place in the universe.

And, as it is infinite, the Nothingness has no shape comprehendible to the human understanding. Even the gods and their masters and creators, the Seven Lords of Existence, cannot fully define it, as they are no part in it. Gods are created alongside universes and are fueled by their believers and the Seven Lords make universes and are themselves Existence itself and are fueled themselves. They only understand what it is that exists, and therefore do not understand what does not exist; the only thing they know is that nothing is their absolute opposite and that they should never tamper with it. The costs, which they know nothing about, could be dire, for both them and their creation, Existence.

In fact, even its name, Nowhere or Nothingness, is an error: to give it name, a label, is to define it and thus to give it a type of existence, which is contradictory to the whole of the Nothingness. So, since it is impossible for us, those who exist, to define the indefinable, let us simply call it the Nothingness/Nowhere and imagine it as an endless white void of emptiness, shall we?

However, inside the nothing in this nothing "dimension" something in it that appears to exist. It does not truly exist, but it is the only part of the Nothingness that appears to be so. It is vaguely human-shaped and sized figure, with light, greatly calloused grey "skin." The only distinction that it is "human" is that it has four long, solid looking appendages where a human's arms and legs would be and a small bulbous thing at the top that resembles a human head. It wears no expression because it has no face. Its hips are as straight and in line as the rest of the body. It doesn't even have elbows or knees; it's rigid as a board. If a human were to describe it, their first impression would be that it looked like a gray life-sized male bathroom sign, like the ones you see at public restrooms that tell one which bathroom is the male's bathroom and which one is the female's.

It "moves" throughout this "dimension," but it is impossible to tell where it is going or even if it is moving at all, which itself does not know (as if it thought at all); without a distinct point A or B, it is impossible to know any type of distance within the Nothingness. An inch could be a mile for all anyone could know.

No one knows this thing's purpose (Not that anyone knows it exists, because then if they knew about it, then it would indirectly have to exist), what it is meant to achieve through its "existence." It is the only one of its kind and it "exists" in the "dimension" of nothing and quite literally does nothing at all times (not that time exists in Nowhere). The Nothingness, unlike Existence, does not have a collective mind; it is unlike the Seven Lords of Existence, who know and oversee everything in Existence, in Themselves (with a capital T), and give everything that exists some reason to exist, even if it is only meant to exist for no more than a second. But this thing has no knowable purpose and even if it did, it is unlikely to know how it could ever achieve it, if its only purpose was to not exist.

The Seven Lords of Existence personify the greatest, most powerful, most ubiquitous objects/ideas in the whole of existence: Time, Space, Energy, Matter (both solid and dark matter), Life/Death, Thought, and Reality/Unreality. They cannot exist without any of the other and they make up Existence itself. But this thing, this, this, not-thing, not-being, does nothing, is nothing, and yet it is the only thing that "exists" in the Nothingness. Perhaps it is the personification of Nowhere, of Nothing, perhaps not. In Nowhere, nothing is the only certainty.

It travels through the nothingness, not that it is possible. It continues to do its "task," if it has one, and does nothing. Eventually, however, _something_ happens. _Something_, in the place of nothing, happens.

The "not-being" felt a disturbance throughout the whole of Nowhere. Not that it did anything about it. It may have never happened before, but it was still nothing and did not have the thought of curiosity or the choice to act upon it if it had them. But, for the first time, there was another point inside the Nothingness; if one counts the not-being Point A, then this disturbance can be counted as Point B. And, as is the nature of these things, Point A quickly came into contact with Point B.

It was a small tear, roughly the not-being's size, right there into the fabric of nothingness. It is a breaking pointing into Existence, a one-of-a-kind occurrence. Everything around the not-being was nothing and here was _something_. And, for reasons unexplainable to itself or the whole of Existence and Not-Existence, the not-being actually made a choice: it decided to stay by the tear.

Right through the tear in Existence, there was a scene of a planet. It was a red planet. A _very_ red planet. Not that the Not-Being had eyes to look at the scene, but since it didn't _expect_ to not see it, it _did_ (Ignorance of one's limitations can be a powerful tool, after all, and nothing was more ignorant than the Not-Being). But, if the Not-Being had known it, the red planet was the planet Earth, when Trigon had annihilated most of mankind.

Now it "looked" on a different scene, one of Jump City, which is in ruins. The sky was blood-red, the seas were of lava and people were standing statues, forever affixed with expressions of horror and terror, as if they had seen the face and talons of Vice itself. It could even "see" Trigon, the horned red demon, resting on Titan's Tower like a throne.

The amount of power it takes to alter an entire planet to such a degree requires a massive amount of magical power, which can tire even the most powerful reality-warping demons. The magical shockwave had torn a hole into the very of the edge of existence, allowing the not-being to look into the changed world.

However, as horrendous as this scene was, the Not-Being wasn't horrified by any means by its tragic nature. It had never seen anything before. Not only that but it literally didn't know anything, about concepts like Good and Evil. How was it to know that things hadn't always been like this? How was it to know any better? Pure, unadulterated ignorance is the Not-Being's could be only plea in this case and it is the only "being" that could use it as absolutely true, genuine testimony and evidence.

It examined the end of the Titan's world with a deep-heated intensity that it had never shown before. But, as with all things, the Not-Being eventually grew weary of the scene. While it was definitely different from the rest of the nothingness that was its non-existence, like the nothingness it was familiar with, nothing else seemed to be happening and if it was possible, the No-Being was growing bored with the ravaged Earth it saw.

It turned to leave the image, when it suddenly felt something else happen. It turned, and saw that something was happening in this tear.

Inside the Titan's universe, it witnessed a battle between the great red-thing that was Trigon fighting much smaller beings, Robin (A latex-covered eyeless-thing), Cyborg (A big, mechanical blue thing), Starfire (A glowing, long-haired green thing), Beast Boy (A green thing that changed shape) and Slade (A black and orange thing with a big fiery stick thing). It saw how bravely the smaller things fought the great red-thing and how they were close to defeat and obliteration when child Raven (A small white thing) rose up against the red-thing and transformed into her regular age (A larger white thing) and renounced Trigon and talked about other stuff that the Not-Being couldn't understand. It almost lost interest again when this bigger white-thing suddenly rose up and wiped the red-thing from sight and instantly transformed the entire landscape that the Not-Being had gotten so familiar with. The destroyed red planet that the not-being had become so enchanted by was replaced with an even better world: the old Earth, a blue skied, repaired, blue sea and human populated one.

All this the not-being observed, and while it didn't understand the true implications of the following events, it did mean something it: it realized that if it ever let go of this, then it would only have _nothing_, in the most literal sense of the word. By merely gazing at the Titan's universe, the Not-Being had discovered existence and like all beings who had found existence, they also found desire. And now, it would never let go it.

This had deep, dark ramifications for the Not-Being; it was feeling desire. It feeling want. It was feeling period. This itself set it apart from the whole of Nowhere. It had now gained _something_. This could only lead to trouble for it. But, if it had stopped then, if it had somehow broken itself from the irresistible lure of Existence, then maybe things would have turned out different. If it had turned away, it could have just gone on its nothing-way and been the all the nothing for it (Even neutrality is something). At the rate it had gone so far, it could have turned its back on Existence and forgotten about it as quickly as it had found it. Perhaps then things wouldn't have turned out as they did; perhaps then Robin's arm would be all in one piece; perhaps then Starfire wouldn't have fallen so hard; perhaps then the Teen Titans hadn't been so greatly defeated as never before; perhaps then the whole of Jump City hadn't been brought to its knees and begged to be sparred its horrible fate; perhaps then so many people wouldn't have died. But that wouldn't make an interesting story now, would it?

But unfortunately, things had gone too far for the Not-Being and it made the single biggest success/mistake (it's often hard to tell them apart, until later, when you see the ripple effect of your actions) of its non-existence: It thought.

Here's what it thought: "…I-"

And that's it. All the Not-Beinghad to do to exist was just use the singular, I, to just think. After all, emotions, like interest and curiosity, are just one small part of Life; the Not-Being could get away with one mere petty emotion, one thing that is unequal to other aspects of life. But thoughts, which stem from Thought, unlike emotions, which stem from Life, have the same value to one another, no matter how stupid or shallow or deep or moving they may seem at the time. The point of thought is to _think_; you need Life to tell the difference between a thought is good from bad or a smart thought from a stupid thought. Thinking, however, is to _be_. '_I think, therefore I am_,' Descartes once said. And if thinking is to be then to be is to think and if the Not-Being was thinking, even if it was just for a second, then that must mean that it, a being of nothing, must instead be a being of _something_.

There was a shift throughout the whole of Creation. The one being, the non-being, had become something, which cannot be inside the Nothingness, Nowhere. If it exists, then it exists inside of Existence, not Nowhere. If it had continued to exist in Nothing, then the Nothingness would become something itself, something both it and Existence cannot afford to do. It was gone in an instant, as if it had never been there, into the one thing (e.g. everything) it had never experienced before: existence.

The Teen Titans are in for some trouble**.**

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If you're still reading this, congratulations, you get a free cookie! Man, is it hard trying to talk about something that doesn't exist within any form of the word! It's nothing this, existence that! But, I digress…

I case there's anyone that recognizes the title, no, neither the song nor the movie inspired this story. In fact, when I came upon this song about 3 weeks after first writing this story, I was afraid someone would accuse me of ripping off the idea. Thankfully, no one did. I wonder if using the song title will now create some criticism. Well, we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

Please review. I don't like sounding desperate but I am. Reviews make me happy and compel me to write this story more often, without the 2 to 3 month breaks in-between chapters.


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